By Jens Tamang

In the fifties women were locked in their dorms to be “protected” from lechers. With the sexual revolution of the sixties came the idea that women, among others, should be able to choose the degree to which they engage with the sexual environment. The doors were unlocked and, much to everyone’s chagrin, we discovered that sex was violent, sex was dangerous, sex was complicated, but most of all, sex was boring. In the age of hipster-esque citationalism ethical anarchy is nothing new, even in the sexual atmosphere. Once upon a time “good boys” dated “nice girls” and unmoving gender norms made the task of choosing a partner easy. Today, it’s a bit more involved. If I am sexually starved, and the boy who sits to my left wants me to blow him, I better do it, because if I don’t the boy to my right certainly will. Ergo, I am faced with an ethical dilemma: If I don’t blow him I’ll just end up alone and horny, but if I do then I’ve compromised my very being.

The information that Macalester spoon-feeds its students regarding sex positivity only complicates this kind of ethical confusion. Whether from classes, workshops, pamphlets, info groups, or sex columns, entities that consider themselves as sexually liberated will always tell you something different from what you experience, as it is with any intelligence determined on its own supremacy.

From Macalester’s sexual elite I have learned that gender is performed, that no always means no, and that nobody has a right to touch my body without my consent. From my experiences in high school I have learned that when I say “no” I don’t always mean it, that when I hear “yes” they don’t always mean it, that people will continue to invade your private space whether you want them to or not, that the world in general is full of swine, and finally that if I wear those sequined booty shorts someone will inevitably call me a faggot.

There are those who want to tell me that “bush is back,” that scissoring and docking are to be taken “seriously,” and that giving head is “powerful.” Those are some of the many “tips” I have received in order to “enlighten and inspire” me “to become a better lover.” You’ll have to just forgive me if I feel that the cultural capital of pubes is really beside the point.
Macalester’s discussion of sex positivity-everything about the way it provides resources-is steeped in classist condescension. At this school you come in as a Freshman and are immediately told what rape “is” and how to treat women during these workshops led by students who have ostensibly no more than a few years of sexual experience under their belts. They are handed some pamphlets and a bag of condoms from the Health and Wellness Center. Then they are told to behave as though they know something so that the Freshman will believe that they do.

What ends up getting communicated is not “Please, feel free to experiment” but “We, the sexually savvy, are liberated and you people are the ignorant prudes whose terrible repression is a product of a flawed system.”

Learning to love and accept your pubes is part of the project of sex positivity, as is understanding that “docking” and “scissoring” are legitimate sexual practices. What is problematic here is the reduction of these practices into the realm of savoir-faire. Our discussion of sex positivity at this school has been completely evacuated of humanity, replaced by the happy-go-luckyness of orientation workshops and door-to-door sex educators.
Sex positivity is not about pubes or colorful condoms. It’s about taking the felt experience in someone’s body and putting it into a context where that experience might be liberating, foster solidarity, or fight supremacy.

Just as with most things, if someone tells you that they speak the truth you could do better than to believe them. Where is the line drawn between S.T.A.R.S. and Macalester’s own sex-ed agenda? Who draws that line? And for what purpose? Hip/candid-sexual-role-models who speak for the body of others always invoke Victorian Puritanism, whether they like it or not. And though they smile at us with unblinking eyes, they aren’t too many steps away from the raving backwoods prophet. And, to be quite frank, the latter is probably better in bed.